Workers' Protest in Egypt: Neo-liberalism and Class Struggle in 21st Century

Beinin, Joël

doi:10.1080/14742830903234320

Cited by 47 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Firstly, they were organized outside the boundaries of political parties or other official institutions, such as the trade unions. Challenging the policies of the regime, and without support from the Egyptian Trade Union Federation, which was closely controlled by the state and the ruling party, the workers relied mainly on informal, local networks (Beinin, 2009;Duboc, 2011). The second feature shared by all these protest movements was the emphasis on universal values, expressed in terms of 'rights', which had been brandished since the 1980s, not only by the civil-democratic movements (El Khawaga, 2003), but also by the struggling workers (Stork, 2011).…”

Section: Historical Origins and Main Featuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

The modularity of the ‘revolutionary’ repertoire of action in Egypt: origins and appropriation by different players

Steuer

2017

Social Movement Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Egyptian 'revolutionary' repertoire of action, that is to say the repertoire used by the protesters of January 2011, was characterized by a combination of several features: occupation of a symbolic place; 'horizontal' forms of organization; recourse to new electronic information and communication technologies (especially social networks); and rhetoric centered around universal values such as dignity, social justice, human rights and democracy. This repertoire was born as a result of the merging of two parallel cycles of mobilization, which had actually started during the previous decades, one animated by activists from the educated middle class, and the other by workers struggling for economic and social reforms. After the fall of Hosni Mubarak in February 2011, it demonstrated its extreme modularity, being appropriated by different players from all sections of the political spectrum, from the Salafist hāzimūn to proponents of the military power.

show abstract

Section: Historical Origins and Main Featuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

The modularity of the ‘revolutionary’ repertoire of action in Egypt: origins and appropriation by different players

Steuer

2017

Social Movement Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Between 1998 and 2008, around 2 million Egyptian workers participated in more than 2,600 factory occupations. Joel Beinin (2009: 450) points out that this mobilization ‘constitutes the largest and most sustained social movement in Egypt since the campaign to oust the British occupiers following the end of World War II’. The tension escalated after 2006, with more than 600 collective labour actions per year (Beinin, 2009).…”

Section: Secular Oppositionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Joel Beinin (2009: 450) points out that this mobilization ‘constitutes the largest and most sustained social movement in Egypt since the campaign to oust the British occupiers following the end of World War II’. The tension escalated after 2006, with more than 600 collective labour actions per year (Beinin, 2009). Textile workers led the actions, but many workers from the private and public sectors, as well as professionals (teachers, clerks, pharmacists, doctors and university professors) also participated.…”

Section: Secular Oppositionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Textile workers led the actions, but many workers from the private and public sectors, as well as professionals (teachers, clerks, pharmacists, doctors and university professors) also participated. The actions protested against the low wages and the failure to pay bonuses following privatization, the establishment of free trade zones, and the deregulation of employer–employee relations (ibid., 2009: 450–51). The strikes were initiated by local workers’ networks: the union officials adamantly resisted them (and in some cases, they were detained by workers) (ibid., 2009: 452).…”

Section: Secular Oppositionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Fight or Acquiesce? Religion and Political Process in Turkey's and Egypt's Neoliberalizations

Tuğal¹

2012

Development and Change

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The Polanyian expectation that disruptive marketization will lead to movements and policies that seek to 'embed' the market in society needs to be tempered by closer scrutiny to historical, religious and political contexts. This article studies how movements respond to marketization. The analysis proceeds through a comparison of the Turkish and Egyptian neoliberalizations, religious movements of the last decades, secular opposition, and finally recent processes, which have led to generally different social takes on neoliberalism. The irony of the Turkish case is that with the empowerment of the Islamists, religious opposition to neoliberalism was muted and secular opposition further marginalized and labelled as 'anti-democratic'. As a result, free market policies were not only sustained, but deepened and intensified, turning Turkey into a neoliberal 'success story'. The (thus far) sustained mobilization of youth and labour in Egypt makes a direct imitation unlikely. Another major factor that would prevent a 'Turkish' solution to Egypt's crisis is the contrasting structure of the religious fields. Moreover, while the passive revolution has further solidified the professional and unified religious field in Turkey, the revolutionary process in Egypt seems to reinforce the fragmentation of the religious field. The article points out that making Islam compatible with neoliberalism would be more difficult in a country with a fragmented religious field, such as Egypt. Although neoliberalism was imposed from above and resisted from below in both nations, in Turkey it came to be embraced in the name of Islam and democracy, whereas in Egypt it remains an imposition and popular struggles against it persist. It is suggested that this process and field-based approach to a Polanyian problem can also shed new light on discussions about 'actually existing neoliberalisms'.

show abstract

“…Glover, 2010;Beinin, 2009). Most of these discussions were from a political science point of view, and none of the materials that this researcher could find discuss disability-related protests, except for Glover (2010), who mentions them in passing.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Arab Spring Protests and Concurrent Disability Protests: Social Movement Spillover or Spurious Relationship?

Barnartt

2014

SSJ

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Workers' Protest in Egypt: Neo-liberalism and Class Struggle in 21st Century

Cited by 47 publications

References 0 publications

The modularity of the ‘revolutionary’ repertoire of action in Egypt: origins and appropriation by different players

The modularity of the ‘revolutionary’ repertoire of action in Egypt: origins and appropriation by different players

Fight or Acquiesce? Religion and Political Process in Turkey's and Egypt's Neoliberalizations

The Arab Spring Protests and Concurrent Disability Protests: Social Movement Spillover or Spurious Relationship?

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About